5 comments

  • ozb 2 hours ago
    Almost every statement in this paper is wrong.

    The central claim in particular is not proven because a physical theory P need not be able to express statements like "there exists a number G, which, when interpreted as the text of a theory T, essentially states that the theory T itself is unprovable in the broader physical theory P" as an empirical physical fact.

  • mihaic 4 hours ago
    Would be fascinating if true, but I'd be very curious what kind of model of "reality" they actually have.

    The paper itself [1] seems quite compact and extremely high level, so I'm sure some heavy hitters would try to reformulate it. Would be the most unintuitive thing to happen since Bell's theorem [2].

    [1] https://jhap.du.ac.ir/article_488.html

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

  • ralph84 2 hours ago
    Even if they prove our universe can’t be simulated in a computer built the way we build them, how can they prove there aren’t other ways to build computers?
    • abemiller 1 hour ago
      Yea I mean a more generic version of the simulation theory is just that there is an "outside world" within which our universe exists in containment. Seems probably impossible to disprove (or prove) that for the same reason that proofs about the existence of God are hard.

      But, making proofs about the capabilities of the exact types of computation we currently use can still be interesting.

  • karmakaze 3 hours ago
    > "Therefore, no physically complete and consistent theory of everything can be derived from computation alone. [...]"

    It wasn't stated why all truths need to be provable though. Perhaps the paper goes into this detail that I'd like explained.